I first met this quote on a refrigerator magnet. Since then, I’ve seen it online attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, Kurt Vonnegut, and several more historical figures. The website Quote Investigator says that it actually comes from a 1997 article by journalist Mary Schmich, but the sentiment does have a timeless quality about it.

I find it the perfect New Year’s resolution for someone who
gets bored easily. You can switch your resolution whenever you lose interest!

I usually practice this in small ways (ordering Thai food
one increased spicy-ness level is a recent example), but one more dramatic
instance stands out in my memory.

I was in college, and I had a choice between mentoring kids
at a high school or at a juvenile detention facility. I was a 19-year-old, rule-abiding
perfectionist who had never even jaywalked. My stomach tied in a knot, but I
closed my eyes and signed my name hard and fast before I could change my mind.
And that was how I ended up spending an afternoon each week in juvie.

I think I expected the story to end like a picture book: Dana
makes a new friend and realizes “Hey! We’re not that different after all!”

Spoiler alert: We were
that different.

The kids I met hadn’t read the books I had read, or played
the sports I played. We lived in different pop culture universes. We had
trouble communicating because we spoke different slang. I didn’t find common
ground, but my fear decreased every time I visited. Ultimately I learned that
different isn’t as scary as the unknown.

Not all our fears can be boiled down to a fear of the
unknown. It’s reasonable to be afraid of the dog who bit you last week. But
fear of the unknown can get in the way of a good life. After all, chocolate was
once an unknown food to Europeans.

This year, why not examine which of your fears come from not knowing and which come from a known threat. “Do one thing every day that scares you”… because it is unknown… is how I’d amend the quote. You can even take it slower, change every day to every week or month.

Or a snake. This
Nature special on DVD covers both and may leave you with a new appreciation
for these species… or it may leave you with a creeping sensation running up
your spine. No guarantees.

Ascend to great
heights

Watch The
Man on the Wire, a documentary about Philippe Petit and his walk across
a high wire between the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, and you will visit
breathtaking heights without ever leaving your couch.

Want more practice? Try enrolling in the Gale Course Get
Assertive, available at no cost with your library card.

Read outside your
political comfort zone

When thinking back to Thanksgiving or Christmas, were politics the scariest thing at your dinner table? Consider picking up a book by a political commentator with a different view from yours, and see what you might discover (and maybe the scariest dinner table conversation this year will be about cranberries).

Here are several titles that have recently spent time on The
New York Times Best Sellers list.

Reading a book about (or even better, written by) someone from
your own personal unknown category can be a first step to conquering the normal,
but embarrassing, discomfort that appears when we interact with someone
unfamiliar to us. These are some books that have served that purpose for me.